Feeding infants is a round-the-clock commitment that must be carried out with care. Although breast-feeding babies is the best method, it is not feasible when in public or when the mother is not around. In such cases, alternate methods, such as the use of feeding bottles containing milk or other infant formula food is widely accepted. Currently parents are required to buy specialized drinking vessels for their baby in various forms, for example, a baby bottle with nipple insert, a bottle with a sippy spout or a straw spout for when the baby teaches toddler stage, etc. The problem with this is that each vessel has a limited life span. It is common that after 9 months of age the baby will no longer require a baby bottle with a nipple as the baby has progressed to the next stage of feeding. This means the baby bottle is of no use to the parent anymore. Furthermore, the parent usually needs to purchase many baby bottles to meet the demands of feeding a baby. Such a situation results in a lot of waste once the period is reached where the baby bottle is no longer needed and is therefore often discarded. Moreover, the parents when travelling are required to not only carry drinking vessels they may need for themselves, but also the special drinking vessels they need for baby such as the baby bottles and sippy cups. This results in a cumbersome travelling experience, especially when the baby is transitioning from milk in a baby bottle to liquids in a sippy cup, in which case numerous types of baby and toddler drinking vessels are required.
Whilst there are currently silicone spout adaptors on the market that turn an adult drinking vessel into a toddler sippy or straw cup, these existing adaptors can only perform a single function as the drinking spout component is built into the device. This means the user will need to purchase multiple spout adaptors for the diverse needs of the child. For instance, the user will need to buy a silicone sippy spout adaptor, a separate silicone straw cup adaptor and so on. Just like it is cumbersome to travel with many bottles, it is also cumbersome to travel with many adaptors to convert existing drinking vessels. It is commonly known that babies can be very fussy with the nipple that they use on a baby bottle and at times they will not feed from the nipple that came with the baby bottle. To combat this issue, there are varied brands of baby bottles on the market that use a “universal” size of nipple for wide neck bottles. By creating the nipple at a universal it means the parents can try distinct brands of baby brand nipples on their compatible bottle, in the case that their baby is not taking to the brand of nipple that came with the compatible bottle. However, there is no silicone adaptor on the market that currently allows a parent to use varied brands of nipples or out spout inserts. In fact, there is no other silicone adaptor on the market that allows for inserts.
The choice of silicone feeding bottles over conventional plastic feeding bottles has become a recent preference of safety concerned parents. Besides being Bisphenol-A free (BPA-free), silicone is flexible, can be safely heated, is dishwasher safe, and provides high spill proof resistance. While it is true that this advancement has nailed many drawbacks associated with conventional feeding bottles, nonetheless, one dire need of having a main-purpose feeding solution which can conveniently be reused per se with other associated components, adapted for different age groups of children with different feeding requirements is something that is yet to be achieved. In other words, not every feeding container serves multiple purposes. Requirements of an infant or a weaned breast-feeding infant are very different from a toddler of one or more years old who is no longer dependent on nipple inserts for feeding. This results in having the parents resort to numerous feeding bottles or drinking tops once the period is reached where the bottle is discarded. Further, taking an instance of travelling, the parents are required to not only bring drinking vessels they may need for themselves, but also the drinking vessels their baby needs. This causes inconvenience of carrying larger bags and multiple drinking vessels especially while transitioning from milk in a feeding bottle to other fluids in another Sippy cup. Therefore, a to-go drinking vessel is preferred during travel, since pouring the fluids out to another vessel will trigger the risk of spilling. It is therefore ideal to have a device that can be readily converted to a to-go style drinking vessel without the need of transferring the portion to another drinking device.
Many inventions have been made in this regard. But they either require a pre-arranged lid (US 20150008220), spout or bottle inserts (U.S. Pat. No. 4,994,076) for each of the container/vessel. They come in a unique size to fit a unique sized container/vessel without which they are of no use. Few attempted solutions have developed “a stretchable drinking lid” to fit a selective number of different sized containers/vessels (US 20130060224). Yet, such drinking tops are unproductive outside the set of selective different sized containers/vessels. Other existing universal silicone drinking tops have the drinking spout adaptors fixed to the vessel/container which ultimately renders a single function leaving the user again to purchase multiple spout adaptor such as silicone sippy spout adaptor, a separate silicone straw cup adaptor and so on. Besides, though the other available alternative drinking lids do provide flexibility to stretch over adult vessels, they lack the ability to accommodate different spout/nipples inserts easily within the lid without compromising the spill proof resistance of the overall vessel. The problem with most of the existing stretchable silicone lids for drinking vessels are that they lack the capability of allowing different model nipples or spout inserts to be inserted into the drinking vessel/container. They are further deficient providing an airtight stretchable lid that can convert any regular container/vessel such as a glass or cup into a preferred baby feeding vessel such as a baby bottle, a sippy cap or a straw cup, or a milk storage container by allowing different inserts to be mounted based on user preference without removing the lid.
Therefore, there is a long standing but unresolved need in the industry for a single drinking top cover having a stretchable material skin that not only extends over diverse types and sizes of drinking vessels/containers, but also allows diverse types of spout/nipples inserts to be easily secured to of be detached from the lid fathoming the need of different age group of users. There also exists a dire need in this field for a utility model which is more of a compact nature and provides a convenient solution to the of travelling with multiple feeding bottles and its corresponding multiple lids.